Firstly, Knights of Pen & Paper is worth the package price, especially when on sale. A very unique and fun RPG. If you want a more in-depth review of this I recommend searching Youtube. I can't do it justice compared to just watching some gameplay. Dead in Vinland was a surprise. I'd not heard of it before this package. I haven't played it enough to say anything critical so I consider it a nice bonus for my money. Lastly, Evoland 2 was what I was interested in and most disappointed by. Does it provide the experience as advertised? Yes. Was that experience fun? No. I feel the game accelerated through the early RPG graphics as "Tutorial" material and didn't attempt in anyway to explore the actual game mechanics in any meaningful way. You then get stuck in a weird pseudo Link to the Past/3D Top Down Action RPG that's REALLY boring to play through. Essentially the Evolutions are in graphics style mostly with very little evolution in game mechanics and almost zero plot to tie any of it together (something irreverent or comedic would have worked well for this). Would I buy this package again? Yes, for Knights of Pen & Paper alone. Dead in Vinland was a great bonus and Evoland was at least worth exploring for a bit for a couple of dollars.
I'm an old-school shooter fan so I wasn't sure if this era of shooter would be good. I was pleasantly surprised and had a LOT of fun with it. Enough to warrant playing New Game + for once. The Good: Gorgeous. The game is just gorgeous. No bullet sponges (other then bosses). The Narrative and how it integrates into the level design. This I think is the best part of the game. Old school FPSes had platforms and doors popping out of nowhere and we just all accepted the overly gamey aspects as par for the course. This game uses the narrative (and other character attributes) to explain away these things so you never get pulled out of immersion. Really brilliant. The So-So: A little short. It took me 6 hours to play through the first time. However, at current prices it's WELL worth the money. For instance, Singularity took around the same amount of time and cost quite a bit more when not on sale. Regenerative health. Honestly, I didn't mind this game design choice here at all. It fits really well with the overall experience, but some people truly hate regen health so I thought I'd mention it. Quick-time events. Again, the way they're done it's actually a good design choice for the experience, but some people truly hate them, even when done right (which they are here). The Bad: So this one is a bit controversial, but I thought the actual Quick-draw Duels sucked. It's unfortunate, because this is actually such a core part of the game that they even made a second mode of just Duels. During the campaign you only have a half dozen or so of these so it isn't enough to detract from that experience, but they are the places where I kept dying. I just didn't enjoy them, but others may. TL;DR - Buy it. You won't regret doing so.
I'm about 3 hours into this so far, but what I've played has been really quite good. The guns play is top-notch, the enemies are interesting, the story is cool, the graphics hold up to more modern AAA titles, and the added puzzle elements are quite unique. As Ravensoft's swan-song, I'm quite pleased with the experience. Played on Win7 with an I5-3rd gen and a GTX 660 (2GB) at 1080p. Smooth as butter. The only complaints I really have is that the upgrade system doesn't let you experiment and I've heard the experience is a little short, but if bought on-sale (which happens from time to time on here) at $10-15 you can't go wrong.
I love these older games and this one is a true classic. Watch Gmanlives review on Youtube for a better review then I can give. As for running on Linux, using the latest version of Wine on Linux Mint 20.2, no other special configurations, everything runs perfectly. System specs: Dell Optiplex 3020 CPU: I3 GPU: Intel Onboard HD 4400 Ram: 8GB Obviously this is one of those cheap $100 Ebay refurbs and as such I had to turn the resolution down to 1280x720, but otherwise super stable and smooth gameplay.
